An Image of Death (11 page)

Tonight Mika and Arin were restless. Her father-in-law, who expected Arin to dine with him when Sacha was gone, was off at some conference. Major General Dimitri Yudin was an important man, often attending meetings in Geneva and Brussels, especially now that Gorbachov was pushing for arms control. And her mother-in-law was visiting family back in Russia. So Arin and Mika had dinner together and shared stories of how they’d met their husbands.

Arin had met Sacha after the 1988 earthquake. Her aunt, a doctor, asked her to volunteer at the hospital after the quake struck the northern part of the country and claimed 25,000 lives. The Soviet Army rushed troops in for disaster relief, but poor food and lack of field sanitation had caused mass illnesses among the men. The rescuers had to be rescued.

The first time she saw Sacha, she knew he was the one. He was pale and weak and nearly delirious with fever, but she couldn’t look away. With his blond hair and fair skin, so different from her dark, Gypsy looks, she thought at first he might be a fallen angel. It was only when she felt hot and cold at the same time and her insides grew wet and slippery that she realized, angel or Russian, she wanted him.

She spent all her time at the hospital, sponging him with cool cloths when he was sweating. Covering him with blankets when he shivered. Forcing him to drink the water they’d shipped in from Turkey. When he tossed and turned, occasionally groaning or murmuring words she didn’t understand, she sat on the edge of his bed and soothed him.

Finally, the fever broke, and he opened his eyes. Arin had never seen such deep pools of blue. She continued to visit every day, bringing oranges and cakes from home, once in a while a piece of chocolate. She chattered about school, her friends, her family. Eventually, he was strong enough to go for walks. She took him down the tree-lined boulevards of Yerevan, pointing out the volcanic tuffa that made the buildings pink. Showing him Mount Ararat, which you could see from almost any spot in the city.

It was during their walks that Sacha started to talk. He didn’t want a career in the military. He was a musician, and he wanted to play in a rock band. To become as famous as the Stones. Arin grinned. She loved Mick Jagger. She had a bootleg cassette of
Tattoo You
. It was one of her most prized possessions.

As Sacha got stronger, they ventured farther, sometimes taking the bus to the parkland on the city’s eastern edge. Each day they sat closer together, and one day, his hand casually grazed hers. The next day, he pinned her behind one of the monuments and kissed her, long and deep. When she could breathe again, she kissed him back. The next day she took him into an abandoned church not far from the hospital. They were married four months later.

Now, caught up in the memory, Arin smiled and started humming “Start Me Up,” the first track on
Tattoo You.

“I know that song,” Mika said thickly. She was stretched out, half drunk, on the floor.

Arin explained. It was their song, hers and Sacha’s. She would sing or hum it whenever she wanted Sacha to touch her. To “start her up,” she’d sing in broken English. Usually he would comply.

“Tatuirovka?
Tattoo?” Mika asked.

“Da.”

Mika rolled over and pushed up to her elbows. “Now that is an excellent idea.”

Arin tilted her head. “What?”

Laughing, Mika rose unsteadily to her feet. “Put on your shoes and come with me.” Her eyes shone. “Do not worry. The men will love it.”

A few minutes later, she and Mika were en route to Tbilisi, forty kilometers away. Their ride dropped them off at the top of a cobblestone street in the old city. Tottering in flimsy shoes, Arin clutched Mika’s arm as they stumbled down the rise. Sacha said the old city was supposed to look like Paris—whatever that looked like. Here, though, someone’s laundry was strung across a porch. You wouldn’t see that in Paris, she was sure. “Where are we going?”

“A place that Vlad knows.”

Arin frowned. Vlad was a charmer, but there was something wild and dangerous about him. Sometimes she caught him staring at her with those pale blue eyes. But just as she would begin to say something, he would break into a crooked smile and make some wonderfully funny comment or joke. He was a born leader, Sacha said, a soldier who knew how to dangle the carrot as well as the stick. He could be ruthless, particularly when it came to
dyedovschina
, the fierce hazing of new recruits. But the men in his unit were devoted to him, and Mika said he would rule the world one day. She was only half joking.

As they passed narrow buildings separated by even narrower streets, Arin’s head felt light and spongy. She hoped they didn’t have far to go. Thankfully, Mika turned into an alley and stopped at a dimly lit shop. Arin could just make out pictures, cartoons really, tacked to the shop’s window. Across the alley was a video parlor, featuring the latest titles from Japan. Next to it was a seedy-looking souvenir shop. A radio somewhere was playing sad music.

The man who opened the door eyed them suspiciously, but after Mika explained, he grunted and swung the door wide. Arin was troubled by the gritty, dingy look of the place, but Mika seemed at ease, and Arin was too drunk to pick a fight. After negotiating the price—Mika could talk anyone into anything—she lay down on the table and unbuttoned her blouse.

She and Arin had decided on the design on the ride into town. The tattoo would include two stars on either side of a flaming torch. Arin remembered seeing the same design on some of the soldiers’ arms. When she asked Sacha about it, he said Vlad had come up with it. The two stars represented the stars on a lieutenant’s shoulder board. The torch symbolized fire. Fire was a powerful, masculine energy, Sacha had said. Uncontrolled, it was destructive and unpredictable, but when it was used properly, it could vanquish anything. Just like the soldiers in their divisions. But she wasn’t expected to understand, Sacha added. She was just a woman.

But Arin did understand one thing. A tattoo would mark her as his. Forever. And that was what she wanted. When it was her turn, she rolled up her sleeve and lay on the table. Squeezing her eyes shut, she ignored the sting of the needle, imagining instead how she would reveal the tattoo to Sacha. She would wear a long-sleeved sweater until bedtime. Then she’d slowly draw it over her head and flick her wrist toward him. She’d ask him to kiss it, maybe salute it, too. Then they’d make love. Fiery, passionate love.

She smiled to herself. If he liked it—and she was sure he would—maybe she’d get another. On her left breast next time. Just above her heart.

C
HAPTER
T
WELVE

By the time Dolan made Polaroids of the tattoo, it was after two. I shrugged on my parka while Davis gathered up the tape and photos and slipped them into evidence bags. She and Dolan made their way across the living room, chatting about invoices and next steps. As we reached the front door, Dolan nodded in my direction.

“You’re okay, Foreman.”

I tried not to let on how pleased I was. “How long have you been doing this?”

“About three years.”

“Only three? You seem to know—”

“I was a cameraman in Nam. Back when we still shot film. Shot the siege at Khe Sahn with an Arri-16.”

“By yourself?”

“I had a sound man, but one morning he walked across an open stretch of ground to take a leak and got hit in the face by a sniper round.”

I wondered whether that was why he was in a wheelchair.

As if he was reading my mind, he went on. “I made it back to the world and started shooting local news.” Jericho came up to his chair. Dolan fondled the dog’s ears. “But life’s a bitch, you know? I make it through the Tet offensive, come home in one piece, and then get my leg blown off in a goddamm gas main explosion in Harvey.” He shook his head, as if he were still puzzled about the whole thing.

I gave him my hand. “I’ll think of you the next time I have a nine-hundred entrance fee.”

He grinned as we shook. “Gotta keep out the riffraff.”

I waited for Davis outside. The temperature seemed to have risen a few degrees, and the faint scent of wood smoke hung in the air. “You want to grab some lunch?” I asked when she joined me. “I saw a place around the corner on Touhy. Greek Isles.”

She hesitated a fraction too long. “Sorry. I—I don’t have time.”

“No problem.” I shoved my hands into my pockets. “Listen, thank you for letting me come. I know what you can do with video, but that system really takes it to the next generation.”

She nodded.

“So what happens now? We have a Nike t-shirt, a woman missing a tooth, and a tattoo of a torch and stars. Do you think we—”

She cut me off. “
We
aren’t going to do anything.”

“I—I didn’t mean—”

“Look, Ellie, this ends. Right now. I wanted you here because you do know something about video, and I thought, with a better image, there was a chance you’d recognize the woman. Or the location. But you’ve got to leave it alone now. Let me do my job.”

I had a vision of myself as somebody’s maiden aunt, an interfering, pesky busybody you tolerate, but just barely. Was that how Davis saw me? We walked to her car. “But you do think the tattoo is significant, don’t you?”

She opened the Saturn’s door, deposited her briefcase, and slid into the driver’s seat. “Ellie, I’m going now.”

I leaned into the space between her seat and the door, reluctant to let go. Part of it was the camaraderie. Once Dolan got over his attitude, the three of us had worked well together. I didn’t want it to end. But there was something else, too. A nagging feeling, perhaps a piece of information that I knew and needed to share with Davis. The problem was I couldn’t dig it out of my memory.

“Ellie.” She grasped the door handle. “I have to go.”

I straightened up. Whatever it was would come. “Okay. But, listen—if you need anything.…”

“I know where to find you.”

The car door slammed shut, and the engine turned over. I trudged back to my car. Narrow rivulets of water from melting snow trickled down Dolan’s driveway. I wondered who did his shoveling. A neighborhood kid? Or one of the landscaping services that turn into snow-plow businesses during the winter months? Fouad, my Syrian friend and sometime gardener, says he makes better money in winter, just by hooking a snowplow to his truck. The secret, he claims, is the cost of labor. The Mexicans he hires each summer go back home from November through April, so he pockets pretty much all of his revenue.

I got to the Volvo and fished out my keys. Mexican gardeners, Greek restaurants, Russian cleaning ladies—the North Shore was becoming an international crossroads these days. I pictured Peter Lorre and Sidney Greenstreet slinking around the backstreets and alleys of Winnetka. I smiled. It would never work. The fez would be a dead giveaway.

I opened my car door, thinking about hats, white suits, and foreign intrigue. Then I stopped. A man in a Russian-looking hat had been staring at my house the other day. Driving the cleaning ladies’ van. When he realized I’d seen him, he fled. And Rachel had said a van was involved in the delivery of the tape. I spun around.

Davis was pulling away from the house. I ran after her, waving my arms. “Wait!” I cried. “Hold on!”

Her brakes squealed, and the Saturn lurched to a stop. She rolled down her window.

“Officer Davis…” I panted as I caught up to the car. “Remember what Dolan said about imports? You know, gangs from other parts of the world?”

She blinked. “Yeah?”

“Well, that would—I mean—that could include Russian gangs, couldn’t it?”

“Anything’s possible.”

“I think you should follow me home. There’s someone I want you to meet.”

***

When I walked into Lillian Armstrong’s kitchen, it was clear why she needed a cleaning lady. A tower of dirty dishes balanced beside the sink. Torn Ho-Ho wrappers littered the floor. Open cartons of Chinese take-out, their contents congealed and gummy, lay on the counter. A dirty ashtray sat on the table, the butts smeared with lipstick. The sharp odor of ammonia cut through the residue of stale cigarette smoke. Two cats streaked out of the room as we entered.

I wanted to take a blowtorch to the place. Instead, I crossed to the window. “Would it be okay if I opened this?”

Lillian shrugged resignedly, as if I were an irritation she was obliged to endure. She and I didn’t have what you’d call a “neighborly” relationship. In fact, in the five years she’d lived next door, this was the first time I’d been inside her house. The day she’d moved in, she made sure to tell me how she wouldn’t be around much, since she spent summers at her cottage in Michigan and winters in her Florida condo. Glancing around now, I was glad she’d been true to her word.

A heavy woman with thinning blue hair, she wore a quilted red robe and matching slippers. Despite some tautness around her cheekbones, the result of at least one facelift, pockets of flesh sagged under her eyes, and a wattle seemed to be growing under her chin.

She took a drag off her cigarette. “You’re lucky you caught me.” She addressed herself to Davis, who stood at the kitchen threshold as if taking another step would land her in a DMZ. “I had to fly up for a doctor’s appointment. Then I got the flu.”

Given the organisms that were likely proliferating in her house, I was surprised it wasn’t plague.

“I won’t keep you too long, ma’am,” Davis said. “I just have a couple of questions. Do you engage a cleaning service, Mrs. Armstrong?”

Lillian gazed around, as if noticing the detritus for the first time, and nodded. “They do a lousy job, don’t they?” She sighed. “But then, what can you expect?”

Davis didn’t reply.

“Not one of them speaks a word of English,” She went on. “And they don’t know the first thing about cleaning. How could they? They were milking cows or picking potatoes two weeks before I got them. And the turnover. I get a different one every week. I just get ’em broken in, and there’s a new one.” She rolled her eyes. “I’ve been thinking of changing services.”